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IPA member agencies and other industry experts offer advice, share their views and highlight challenges and opportunities in engaging and incisive posts
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Blog
Andy Fraser explores why a brand's identity can no longer be held together by subjective human judgement alone – and therefore we must stop treating governance as a craft and start managing it with...
Andy Fraser
23rd September 2026
Alex Acosta explores why the brands that win make the Michelangelo bet: commissioning work that shouldn’t be possible and protecting it long enough to become inevitable. Meanwhile, the rest...
Alex Acosta
A brand's true place in business is to act as a compass, and by adopting this role, brands can have a greater positive impact on organic growth, provided four essential conditions are met.
Ben Thompson
Bryan Hogg argues that in a brand landscape that is increasingly losing its meaning, brands should embrace the art of being selfish if they want to return to playing a crucial role in the shaping...
Bryan Hogg
Hemal Gill explores how the advertising industry is experiencing an ambiguous loss and why the path forward is not to fix it, but to stand within it, generate light from the inside out, and build...
Hemal Gill
Jack Stanley argues that the industry is at a moment in history where choice is being forced and that the brands that will define the next century will be those that recognise this and make the...
Jack Stanley
Julian Roberts argues that the advertising industry has stopped asking what brands believe and instead is asking where brands can appear - caught in the spectacle trap without realising that it is...
Julian Roberts
Kally Boshnakova makes the case for imperfection and explains why the brands that embrace it will carry the future of brand building.
Kally Boshnakova
Olivia Collins argues that brands can learn lessons from dating on how to attract – and build relationships – with their consumers.
Olivia Collins
Thomas Soares argues that it's harder than ever to be a truly good brand and that the brands that play into their pantomime villain status will be the ones that get ahead.
Thomas Soares
Tom Moloney explains what brands can learn from comedians to help them find a voice, deepen their identity, and set off on the path to becoming an enduring ‘Headliner’.
Tom Moloney
Rachel Porter argues that advertising, left unchecked, destroys the ecosystems it once sustained and that the brands that survive will be the ones that learn to forecast the oncoming disaster.
Rachel Porter
Sam Collenette argues why we should embrace a polyphonic approach to brand planning, moving beyond a single, monolithic brand voice to a coherent ecosystem that designs for multiple voices,...
Sam Collenette
Dan Holt explains why in a world of abundant media and AI-mediated choice, passive visibility decays quickly. Brands without coherent human evidence risk being flattened; brands that build like...
Dan Holt
Tom Darlington, Head of Consumer Insight, Hearts and Science International, reflects on his time taking the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, and explains why the qualification is the ultimate...
Tom Darlington
29th September 2025
Ten years on from taking the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Tony Mattson, Group Head of Strategy at Havas Media Network UK, looks back at his 'I believe...' thesis and the impact the...
Tony Mattson
11th December 2023
Following the launch of My Mum, Your Dad, Emily Rich argues that everyone working in the industry must continue to champion and embrace the positive cultural shifts against ageism that are...
Emily Rich
19th September 2023
OMD’s Charlie Ebdy assesses what his prize-winning 2015 IPA Excellence Diploma dissertation got right – and wrong – about today’s brand building challenges.
Charlie Ebdy
13th September 2023
Sofia Pires, winner of the President’s Prize for Outstanding Body of Work in the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, explores System 3: the artificial intelligence we access to help us solve...
Sofia Pires
26th January 2023
Isabelle Bale, winner of the Chair’s Prize for Attitude and Inspiration for the 2023 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, argues her belief that thinking in a non-binary way, with shades of grey...
Isabelle Bale
As part of the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Mark Gibbs explains how a climate of crises and mistrust has provided brands with the opportunity to use ethics as a tool for differentiation,...
Mark Gibbs
As part of the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Red Brick Road's Lisa Gulley explores how thinking counter-intuitively about brand behaviours: embracing the discomfort of pain, truth and the...
Lisa Gulley
As part of the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Hearts&Science's Lysette Jones argues that we have to take steps to understand how small brands can break through the hold that big brands have...
Lysette Jones
As part of the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, UM Worldwide's Ruth Corrigan examines the inherent gender bias that pervades our industry, and argues that to restore credibility and safeguard...
Ruth Corrigan
Winner of the John Bartle Prize for Best 'I Believe' essay in the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Wavemaker's Emily Rich argues that brands need to step back from acting like Big-Gods and...
25th January 2023
Fawnbrake Founder, and IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands co-Chair, Amelia Torode shares her memories of 'adland's great philosopher' Jeremy Bullmore who recently passed away aged 93.
Amelia Torode
11th January 2023
As part of the 2022 IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, delegates were asked to write an opinion piece outlining what brands could do to address a particular cultural or societal challenge and affect...
10th October 2022
Omar El-Gammal's 'I Believe' essay from the 2019-20 Excellence Diploma, which reimagines brand growth in the 21st century.
Omar El-Gammal
14th May 2020
Lisa Thompson's 'I Believe' essay from the 2019-20 Excellence Diploma, which examines social mobility in adland.
Lisa Thompson
Kiron Mair's IPA Excellence Diploma essay arguing that brands should be more tantric rather than chasing instant gratification.
Kiron Mair
